Transit App Citymapper Enters Taxi Wars With Hailo Integration

Citymapper Ltd., the London-based transit and journey-planning app company, has integrated taxi app Hailo Network Limited into its offering, obviating the need to switch between apps to order a taxi ride. The upgrade is currently only offered on iOS.

Previously, users of the Citymapper app could only get information on the estimated time and cost of a taxi ride to a chosen destination. If users wanted to order a taxi they would have to leave the app and open a mobile phone taxi-hailing service. Hailo’s app allows users to book and pay for a taxi from their smartphones. Hailo said it was the first time it’s offering has been integrated into a third-party app.

The move follows Google Maps’ integration in May of Uber Technologies Inc.’s service into its live transit offering. The option to use Uber appears under the public transport section in Google Maps. Google Ventures is an investor in San-Francisco based Uber.

Citymapper CEO Azmat Yusuf said the integration of transit apps was an example of “apps talking to other apps. It’s like tap, tap, you’re done.”

The company, which launched in London and New York in 2012, has now expanded to eight cities, including Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, Boston, Madrid, and Washington DC.

Citymapper’s integration with Hailo comes as London’s various taxi companies and associations square off against the challenge from Uber. With Uber connected to Google, and now Hailo integrated with Citymapper, GetTaxi is has found itself without a transit app tie-up.

Richard Pleeth, Global CMO for GetTaxi, said GetTaxi has been having conversations with both Citymapper and Google, and was disappointed that it has not been integrated into one of them yet. “We are looking for integration at the moment, and I do suspect that we will be integrated sooner or later,” Mr. Pleeth said.

He added that the Citymapper, Hailo integration was “great news for the industry in general.”

“It shows the scale and explosion of the on-demand transport industry,” he said.

Uber, which currently operates in 100 cities, has faced stiff resistance around the world to its expansion, but London has seen a particularly acrimonious taxi war between established — and regulated – black cab industry, including Hailo and GetTaxi, and Uber. In June, the city’s thousands of black cab drivers protested in the city center, and there are still court processes to determine Uber’s legal standing. Uber has defended its practices, and used the protests to offer users discounts in various cities.

Citymapper’s Yusuf said the company was now focused on international expansion. He said the calculation of which cities to expand into depended on the availability of open data from local transit authorities, the size of transit population, smartphone penetration, and the ability of Citymapper’s team to work in specific languages. “We’re also looking into emerging markets,” Mr. Yusuf said in an interview.

CityMapper chose Hailo over competing taxi app companies GetTaxi and Uber because of personal connections between the two companies, as well as the fact that both firms started up in London, Mr. Yusuf said.

Yusuf described CityMapper as a “transport app—not a map app—that gets transit right.”

The company doesn’t currently make money. The tie-up with Hailo is an example of services that are in the pipeline, Mr. Yussuf added.

He hinted that CityMapper may soon turn to crowd sourced transit data to improve accuracy and add service layers to its offering.

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